The Generalitat rectifies and proposes freedom of movement between Barcelona and its metropolitan area | Catalonia

The Generalitat of Catalonia has rectified and asked the Ministry of Health to unify the health regions of Barcelona city, the Metropolitan Nord and the South so that there is freedom of movement between the Catalan capital and its neighboring municipalities, a conglomerate of municipalities that totals about five millions of inhabitants. As the Government insisted on initiating the de-escalation by health regions – instead of by provinces, as recommended by the ministry – the city of Barcelona, ​​which is a health region by itself, has remained enclosed within its own municipal limits. Despite entering phase 1, Barcelonans cannot leave the Catalan capital except for work reasons. The Health Department has announced that it will request Health that the three health regions that make up the Catalan capital and its metropolitan area be, starting next Monday, a single territorial unit in order to apply the phases of de-escalation.

Unlike Madrid, which is a single territorial unit and Madrid residents can move throughout the community without restrictions upon entering phase 1, the start of the de-escalation in Barcelona has been decaffeinated due to the mobility problems generated by belonging to regions. different sanitary. Some thirty socialist mayors of the province of Barcelona had already sent a letter last Friday to the President of the Generalitat, Quim Torra, expressing their disagreement with this situation and demanding that he request the ministry to make mobility more flexible between the three health regions.

The Health Department has given up and, although at the time it defended the health regions as the appropriate territorial units for de-escalation (these are the territorial terms used for the management of sanitary equipment), it has now decided to withdraw and demand a unification of the three health regions. This will help, justified in a Health statement, to “fluff up the high population density of Barcelona”.

The Procicat, the technical committee of the Generalitat in charge of piloting the pandemic, has also approved requesting the Ministry of Health that next week, the health regions of Girona and Central Catalonia and the regions of Garraf and Alt Penedés go to phase 2 If Health approves the proposal, these areas would join the other territorial units that launched the new phase on Monday: the two health regions that encompass the province of Tarragona and the Lleida Pyrenees.

However, the Lleida area remains in the air, which is already in phase 1 and, predictably, will remain, at least, this and another week, in this step of the deconfinement process. “The incidence data of new cases of covid-19 in the region have increased since its passage to phase 1 became effective,” said a Health spokesperson. When the passage from Lleida to phase 1 was approved on May 11, the cumulative incidence rate at seven days was 12.1 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. On May 22, however, this value amounted to 42.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. “According to information from the territorial services of the Public Health Agency, transmission chains have been detected in agri-food companies that have kept minimal jobs. The Health Department has decided to wait a few days to see the evolution of these incidents, “said this spokesman.

Salud has pointed out that the evolution of epidemiological risk factors — the incidence of new cases and the effective reproductive rate — remains low. In addition, he pointed out, “the drive given to primary care to have the capacity to diagnose and monitor cases with the availability of PCR tests also contributes to considering that it is time to do this new phase pass.” Catalonia has reported close to 292,000 confirmed cases of covid-19 or with clinical suspicion of the disease. Of these, 11,848 have died, according to the computation of the Generalitat through the death reports reported by the funeral homes.

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